I think the world is more likely to enter a dystopia than any knowledge age utopia for several reasons:
1) Decline in cheap energy - Even if we put up fusion plants everywhere, people think this is free energy, but it's actually expensive energy to start from a state of scratch and go all the way to bringing it to market. We have made fast leaps in the past due to cheap energy and the golden days of oil being cheaper than water are gone. This is not the same thing as "peak oil", but peak oil is obviously a real thing, just nobody knows when it happens. The fact people are bothering with shale oil at all is a pretty ominous sign. Eventually it will require more oil to bring it out of the ground than what the oil is worth.
2) Diminishing returns of complex systems and inherent centralization of complex systems- There's millions of examples of this. One example is a research team used to be one person, now you need many people of several disciplines. It eventually reaches a point where you need a Manhattan project to do anything. This also entails a mandatory authoritarian government directing those resources for "the greater good" or "progress". The human brain is also not wired to deal with infinite complexity, this results in being over-stressed.
If everyone on earth is required to be significantly trained upwards and solve hours of differenetial equations to earn enough for one cheeseburger, everyone will likely just off themselves, or the system would have collapsed and returned to a far more primitive state beforehand.
3) Eventual convergence towards a steady state economy instead of one based on infinite growth - If anything, the "golden age" of civilization is probably the days during periods of infinite growth, unsustainable, debt bubbles where you're essentially borrowing from the future to sustain the now.
Summary: If you want to sustain the current level of "progress", it requires an ever increasing amount of resources, an ever increasing amount of centralization, and loss of freedom. If you want to sustain the civilization that already exists with no progress, it probably still requires all of these features in the face of declining EROEI.
r0ach you are violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics which is explained in my blog.
You could be correct on a short-term horizon (and on human scale) but in the large scheme of things, it is impossible for you to be correct.
On the specifics, I believe there is more than abundant energy in the universe and mankind is clever enough to extract it.
And the decentralization of information and thus knowledge production is already revolutionizing our world. This will accelerate.
I am optimistic. Yeah we'll see the Western socialism collapse, which is good change. Along the way, we will see some negative things happen, such as potentially war, etc..
The Western world has had a long period of relative peace and affluence. Cycles dictate that must change. I don't view the future as continuous decline, rather as a cycle of up and down. Yet technology never stops improving our quality of life overall.
These are not really mutually exclusive possibilities. r0ach may be correct in the medium term and iamnotback correct over the long run.
As an intellectual exercise I will share a passage from a book written some 250 years ago titled
The Way Of God. This book caught my attention when I heard it described by someone as the most systematic exposition of monotheism fundamentals ever written yet its author claimed he received direct instruction from an otherworldly being he identified as an angel. That was a very interesting juxtaposition so I picked up a copy. Below is a passage from the book.
Justice decreed that neither man nor the world will ever be able to rise to perfection while still in their current fallen state. Because they remain in this spoiled, non-ideal condition, and evil in the meantime has increased, both must go through a stage of destruction before either can arrive at perfection.
Man must therefore die, and everything else that was corrupted with him also must perish. The soul cannot purify the body until the body dies and deteriorates and a new structure is composed, that the soul can enter and purify. The entire world must likewise be destroyed and cease to exist in its present form, and it must then be renewed in a new state worthy of perfection.
It was therefore decreed that man should die and then be brought back to life. This is the concept of the Resurrection of the Dead. The entire world must similarly be destroyed... for one thousand years it will be desolate. At the end of this thousand years, God will again renew His world.
The true time and place of reward will therefore be after the resurrection in this renewed world. Man will then enjoy his reward with both body and soul. The body will be purified by the soul, and will therefore also be in a proper state to enjoy that good.
Since it has been decreed that man must die, body and soul must remain separated until the time comes for them to be reunited. During this period of separation, an appropriate place must exist for each of the two separate parts. The body thus returns to its element, decomposing and losing its form... When the soul is recombined with the body after the resurrection, however, it will no longer be bound or restricted and will enter the body with all its brilliance and strength. The body will then experience a great enlightenment, and will not have to develop gradually as a child now does.
So how is this passage relevant? Consider the following hypothetical scenario:
1) Homo Sapiens go extinct.
2) Some portion of Humanity survives in a digitized form having figured out a way to virtualize our consciousness.
3) Humanity eventually leaves these virtual spaces for newly constructed bodies built rather then bred.
Such a scenario is of course science fiction. However, I find it interesting that ancient religious predictions interpreted in their most literal sense appear to be more plausible not less as time and technology progress. Perhaps homo sapiens are doomed for the reasons mentioned while humanity is destined for a golden age of knowledge.
